Terry Eagleton

Books

The empire writes back. Should the literary realm be seen as its own republic, complete with frontiers, legislators and rivalries? Yes, according to a bold new theory. Terry Eagleton applauds a milestone in the history of modern thought

• 11 April 2005

The World Republic of Letters Pascale Casanova Harvard University Press, 440pp, £22.95 ISBN 067401345X

Books

How to be popular. A series of bluffers' guides reveals unexpected connections between the Marquis de Sade, Darwin and Hitler. Terry Eagleton on the pros and cons of a much-mocked format

• 21 February 2005

How to Read Darwin Mark Ridley, Granta Books ISBN 1862077282 Freud by Josh Cohen l Hitler by Neil Gregor Nietzsche by Keith Ansell Pearson l Sade by John Phillips Wittgenstein by Ray Monk Granta Books, £6.99 each

Diary - Terry Eagleton

• 31 January 2005

The dispiriting news is that we are not going to be wiped out by terrorists, but by bird flu. This is a far less satisfactory prospect. Being done in by birds is just embarrassing

Society

Against family values

• 13 December 2004
• 1 comment

NS Christmas - Christian evangelicals have got Jesus Christ all wrong, argues Terry Eagleton

Books

The Stratford man. Who was Shakespeare? Was he an underground Catholic? Did he play the lute? Was he run out of town? Short of a successful seance, we can never be sure. Terry Eagleton enjoys a biography that triumphs over the patchy evidence

• 15 November 2004

Will in the World Stephen Greenblatt Jonathan Cape, 430pp, £20 ISBN 022406276X

Books

Too clever by half. Even the left now despises intellectuals. We value knowledge only when it can be used to achieve something else, whether it is social cohesion or economic production. So the thinker has given way to the expert, and politics to technocracy

• 13 September 2004

Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Frank Furedi Continuum, 176pp, £12.99 ISBN 0826467695

Society

Big ideas - Rediscover a common cause or die

• 26 July 2004

Culture - We used to find unity in a shared heritage. Yet we are set on defining our difference

Diary - Terry Eagleton

• 17 May 2004

At the self-admiring EU enlargement ceremony in Dublin, they speak in Irish - a proud affirmation of ethnic identity by a country desperate to look exactly like Switzerland

World Affairs

A carnival of unreason. Fascists strut, conservatives lounge. Some conservatives believe in ideas, fascists prefer myths. Terry Eagleton makes important distinctions

• 03 May 2004

The Anatomy of Fascism Robert O Paxton Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 336pp, £20 ISBN 0713997206

Ideas

The last Jewish intellectual. Raised in Jerusalem and Cairo but educated in the US, Edward Said was a maverick both culturally and politically, yet he was also a great humanist of the old school. Terry Eagleton on "an imagination quickened by the diverse and unpredictable"

• 29 March 2004

Power, Politics and Culture: interviews with Edward W Said Edited and with an introduction by Gauri Viswanathan Bloomsbury, 485pp, £20 ISBN 0747571074